dmstraker

Macros in AP are much simpler than PS. Easy to record/replay. Not as flexible. The best way to learn, as ever, is to get stuck in...

Most excellent! Many thanks, Egor.

Very easy. Just add a pixel layer (Layer/New Layer) above the Background and paint on this. AP has a superb range of brush and the ability to control these. It handles pressure-sensitive tablets. You could even add a set of pixel layers, painting increasing detail and using blending modes to control these.

Here's an interesting discovery: 1. Duplicate image. Blend Mode: Contrast Negate. Note how image looks. 2. From the beginning again, add Pixel layer above image. Fill with white. Blend Mode: Negation. Aha! It looks the same as 1. So they are related. TIme to sleep on it, perchance.

Useful note. Thanks, RC-R. The Overlay etc. group indeed act this way and perhaps Contrast Negate is some kind of inversion of these. As an experiment I overlaid an image with a 50% grey layer and set Contrast Negate blend mode. All that is visible is 50% grey. Which is a kind of opposite, I guess to Overlay. I tried painting with white and black. Both, interestingly, gave the same result, which was a pretty extreme black/white solarization. Painting with other colours in the blend layer also gives a solarization, but now with these colours and their inverse as the two solarized colours. Blending a duplicate layer with Contrast Negate gives an odd recolour effect. Interestingly, Negation has a similar, and more colourful effect. Negation uses the formula 'Int(Base + Blend)'. Maybe Contrast Negate uses some variation on this.

Not true. There's about 200 free and excellent short videos that step you through everything from basics to advanced stuff. There's also an excellent offline help system. Just going through this stuff quickly taught me far more than fiddling around for years in photoshop. Affinity are one of the best at helping newbies.

Go to Help and search for the Colour Replacement Brush Tool. The Affinity help system is really good -- much better than most other software. Basically, you select the colour replacement brush (under the normal paintbrush), select a foreground colour and then just start painting. It will replace the colour it first finds under the brush, taking note of the tolerance setting in the top toolbar. Easy.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly is happening in the Contrast Negate blend mode. It seems there are two 'opposite' groups: RBM and GYC, so Red is opposite to Green, Blue opposite to Yellow and Magenta opposite to Cyan. Then you get effects such as when both layers are the same, you get the opposite colour, but if the layers are opposites, you get the bottom layer colour (otherwise the top layer). The best use so far I've found for it is when overlaying an image with text, so the text is always contrastive. Am I heading in the right direction? Any suggestions?

Great linkset -- thanks, MBd!

Perhaps not quite the same, but I often use Levels to adjust black, white and mid-tones (gamma).

Sometimes AP needs time to do things, from loading an image to doing a fancy transformation. When this happens, it appears as if the program has frozen. It would be nice if you could show a message somewhere to let me know it has not died but is working on something. It's also good psychology to say 'I'm doing this ... Now I'm doing that ...' so I can see how hard AP is working for me.

Thanks, James. Very helpful. I'm using PS terminology, so assume 'composite layer' is top 'blend layer'. I'm also trying to figure out the algorithm for each. For example I reckon that for Erase, Result opacity = Base opacity * (1 – Blend opacity). Are you able to ask developers about this? It would save some reverse engineering and guesswork. I suspect the lack of Divide is because it's relatively recent (CS5 2005), although Subtract came in at the same time. Dissolve is also missing, though less of a loss.

C1v10 is twice the price of LRv6. Is it worth the difference? I've fingers crossed that APv2 will catch up so I can dump LR.

Adobe do this too. If you use Elements, there's lots of 'get better stuff in Photoshop. pshaw.

Interesting. Thanks. You could probably write a whole book on using Curves and the various shapes you can throw. I've been playing of late with the black-end uptick + small darks decrease + greater highlights increase.

I'm still using LR as it also seems to do a better job of various processes (HDR, CA, shadows/highlights, etc). Looking forward to Affinity overtaking Adobe in the department.

Perhaps a bit harsh, though I'll admit I am happier with the Photo persona than the Develop persona-- I personally use Lightroom 6 (DVD version) as a front end, in particular for its browse, HDR, CA and other controls. I then pass tif through to Affinity, which I find better than PS for more detailed editing. I'd be interested to hear a Serif response to this and plans for Develop, er, development.

This might help: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22377-can-you-edit-layer-masks-like-a-normal-layer/

I've already reported this as a bug and got an 'oh yes' response. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/38205-library-defaults-to-all-categories-opened/?hl=library

I use Lightroom as a front end, then pass to AP (set AP as editor in LR preferences). You can also use other programme that have a browse facility, like On1.

I'd use select brush on the background, then a one-shot refine or shrink to ensure subject not caught, then do a blur (perhaps an average). Around a minute to do this. Am I missing something?

Thanks. Would also be good in the Fill dialogue - should be an easy code implementation, especially as the function is already there. It also aligns with Photoshop, making it easier for new converts to the Affinity cause!

I've done this. It works fine. You'll have to navigate to the Affinity folder to find Photo.exe as the key file (typically in C:/Program Files/Affinity/Affinity Photo). Then right click image and Edit in..., photo.exe. It passes the image over in a tif file. I delete this later.

Nice one, crabtrem! I especially like your use of Subtract and Posterise. Out of interest, I posted a 'cartoon' note recently here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/41447-cartoon-effect-with-ap/ Things you can do in your method too include: Soften the jaggies with Gaussian Blur (tiny change may be all that's needed). Simplify with Levels (gradually move up black slider). Make lines monochrome with Black & White.

I continue to notice forum questions that indicate newbies getting lost in the 'classic' ways such as not having pixel layers selected, dragging layers accidentally into child positions, getting confused by Affinity-specific terminology, Affinity doing things differently to Photoshop, etc I wondered if there was some way to have a 'newbie help' option that pops up notes when things are done wrong. Sure, you can't catch everything, but maybe you can do enough to rescue a decent number of people who might otherwise abandon Affinity for another product.